City details plans for moving graves

Cemetery is in path of O'Hare expansion

August 01, 2006|By Virginia Groark, Tribune staff reporter.

Chicago does not have permission to take possession of St. Johannes Cemetery, but that didn't prevent city officials Monday from outlining their plan to move more than 1,000 graves from the DuPage County burial grounds by Feb. 1, 2008.

The 157-year-old cemetery sits on the southwest edge of O'Hare International Airport, and the city wants to relocate the graves to make room for a runway as part of its $15 billion airfield expansion.

But with two legal battles pending, the city is not allowed to take title to the graveyard or disturb it until the federal courts rule, even though bids are due Sept. 19. Chicago is soliciting bids for grave relocation because it wants to move quickly if it prevails in court.

Still, city officials said they want to proceed with respect. In a meeting near O'Hare on Monday with funeral directors, archeologists and grave-relocation experts, city officials said contractors should not walk in the burial ground, located about a half-mile north of Irving Park Road. They also reminded the group that people continue to visit the graves.

"The cemetery will continue to be active throughout the relocation," said James Chilton, south airfield project manager for the O'Hare Modernization Program.

But officials from St. John's United Church of Christ, the cemetery's caretaker, said it's premature for the city to be soliciting bids. Even if Chicago prevails in court, relocating graves is a complex theological task that should be worked out by the church and relatives of those who are buried, not the city, said Bob Sell, a church spokesman.

"The church has rites of burial," he said. "It does not have rites of unburial."

The graveyard is the final resting place of several 19th Century religious leaders, which helped earn it historic status. There are between 1,400 and 1,600 graves, of which about 900 are clearly marked with monuments. The remainder are unmarked, designated by crosses without names or marked by difficult-to-read monuments, city officials said.

Identifying remains is critical because the city intends to have a person assigned to relatives of each buried person to accommodate their requests. The original markers must be moved with the graves, and a funeral director must be present at each exhumation, city officials said.

Cemeteries have been moved for other public works projects, such as the expansion of Lambert-St. Louis International Airport and the Eisenhower Expressway, but the process is a sensitive one. The St. Johannes project would be even more complicated because the caskets are so old, they probably have disintegrated, making it more difficult to remove remains, according to one cemetery relocation expert who declined to give his name.

Although relatives will make the decisions on where the remains are be moved, the city has developed a list of 12 cemeteries in the city and suburbs that have space.

Randall Leise, superintendent of Bethania Cemetery in Justice, attended the conference Monday, handing out a color booklet about the south suburban 19th Century graveyard, which is on the city's list. Leise said Bethania resembles St. Johannes, with markers and monuments dating to the same time and bearing similar family names. There is one difference.

"Bethania presents a more tranquil environment--without overhead flight or disturbances of any kind," the brochure states.